Cars and Fast Food Produce Energy to Burn

Its an effort to produce clean, renewable energy — by turning Americas love of cars and fast food into a source of energy.

New Energy Technologies is trying to produce useful electric power by harnessing the kinetic energy released by vehicles when they slow down.

This Burger King is a test site and company engineer Jerry Lynch says the results will make a powerful statement.

[Jerry Lynch, Mechanical Engineer, New Energy Technologies]:
What we are saying is that in controlled traffic applications such as speed bumps, at banks, burger king's, shopping malls, that we use that slowing process to just take the weight of the wheels and activate a device that creates energy.

The device is called Motion Power Generator, which looks like a speed bump covered by panels. The weight of the car pushes the panels down as it drives over them. Gears inside the device then turn to generate 2000 watts of electricity, which is sufficient to power a flash-light for a second.

This is not much, but when multiplied by an estimated 100-thousand vehicles that visit the drive-thru every year, it could be a substantial reduction in electricity bill for Burger King.

According to the engineers, the next and most important step is to find how best to store the energy. Once that's achieved, Lynch says it will have enormous potential for all kinds of businesses.

President of the company Meetesh Patel says the device could help lessen some of the energy problems.

[Meetesh Patel, President, New Energy Technologies]:
There are 250 million cars travelling at any given point on America's roadways. And if you can capitalize on capturing some of the energy that they waste by installing these kind of devices on the roads, I think you are definitely doing better than you are right now.

The company hopes to have the finished product on the market sometime in 2010.

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• ntd
• NTDTV
• News
• Cars
• Fast Food
• kinetic
• Energy
• electric
• power
• Burger King
• Motion Power Generator

[EndlessPalm]

Anyone else get the feeling we need to dumping much more funding into fusion reactor technology?

[AZNWOKZ]

If you want a better idea. Use the GYM!!! LOL

People run like Hamster on wheels. HAHAHAHA

[teamkvs]

pretty clever i bet the finish product will be flush with the ground so theres no ramp to burn gas to drive up.

[darkherokaze]

A car has to waste even more energy to generate the power to go over a bump. And you know they aren't getting as much energy out of the machine as the driver is putting in for gas burnt.

Big fucking waste.

[07minute]

sufficient to power a flash-light for a second.

[cool70200]

capacators or battteries, but then energy storage is another whole issue itself

pretty clever fella